It thus appears that the -- synoikismos--, by which the Palatine community incorporated that of the Quirinal, marked an intermediate stage between the earliest -- synoikismos-- by which the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres became blended, and all those that took place afterwards.

The annexed community was no longer allowed to form a separate tribe in the new whole, but it was permitted to furnish at least a distinct portion of each tribe; and its ritual institutions were not only allowed to subsist--as was afterwards done in other cases, after the capture of Alba for example--but were elevated into institutions of the united community, a course which was not pursued in any subsequent instance.
Dependents and Guests This amalgamation of two substantially similar commonwealths produced rather an increase in the size than a change in the intrinsic character of the existing community.

A second process of incorporation, which was carried out far more gradually and had far deeper effects, may be traced back, so far as the first steps in it are concerned, to this epoch; we refer to the amalgamation of the burgesses and the -- metoeci--.

At all times there existed side by side with the burgesses in the Roman community persons who were protected, the "listeners" (-clientes-), as they were called from their being dependents on the several burgess-households, or the "multitude" (-plebes-, from -pleo-, -plenus-), as they were termed negatively with reference to their want of political rights.( 1) The elements of this intermediate stage between the freeman and the slave were, as has been shown( 2) already in existence in the Roman household: but in the community this class necessarily acquired greater importance -de facto- and -de jure-, and that from two reasons.

In the first place the community might itself possess half-free clients as well as slaves; especially after the conquest of a town and the breaking up of its commonwealth it might often appear to the conquering community advisable not to sell the mass of the burgesses formally as slaves, but to allow them the continued possession of freedom -de facto-, so that in the capacity as it were of freedmen of the community they entered into relations of clientship whether to the clans, or to the king.